http://themilitant.com/2016/8035/803502.html
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Vol. 80/No. 35 September 19, 2016
(front page)
‘The Socialist Workers Party is the working
class’s party’
BY EDWIN FRUIT
EVERETT, Wash. — “The Socialist Workers Party is the working-class
alternative to the Democrats and Republicans, the two capitalist parties
that have no solution to the worldwide crisis of capitalism hammering
the working class,” Alyson Kennedy, SWP candidate for U.S. president,
told Norma Jean Foster, a retired school custodian and member of the
Operating Engineers union, who she met campaigning door to door here
Aug. 29. Everett is home to thousands of Boeing aircraft and other workers.
“Our conditions of life and work are worsening as the bosses try to make
workers all over the world pay for their crisis,” Kennedy said. “The
Socialist Workers Party is the only party standing up for the working
class and explaining that we have to organize a movement capable of
making a revolutionary change in this country to put the working class
in power.”
Foster told Kennedy she was leaning to Hillary Clinton, “because I’m
afraid Trump will get us stuck in foreign wars.”
“Both Trump and Clinton will continue U.S. wars abroad, representing the
interests of the ruling class,” Kennedy replied. “Clinton has a long
record as secretary of state acting to keep Washington’s power and
domination abroad in place.”
A friend of Foster’s, a Boeing worker who was visiting, asked Kennedy,
“Did you know that Donald Trump is speaking here tomorrow night?”
“Yes, that’s one of the reasons I wanted to come here. I think a lot of
working people go to hear what he has to say because they see him as
being an outsider, not a professional politician,” Kennedy said. “But he
has no solutions for the working class either, and his demagogic attacks
against immigrants and scapegoating Muslim people divides us.” Foster
decided to buy a subscription to the Militant and a copy of Are They
Rich Because They’re Smart? Class, Privilege and Learning Under
Capitalism by SWP National Secretary Jack Barnes.
Grace, a woman originally from East Africa, greeted Kennedy on the
sidewalk near her home as she was returning from her job as a caregiver.
“I never met a presidential candidate before. In my country politics are
very corrupt and they buy and steal the elections,” she said.
“They steal the elections here too,” Kennedy said. “If the ruling class
thinks one of the candidates will harm their interests, they make sure
their favored alternative is declared the winner.
“Workers all over the world face the effects of the growing contraction
in capitalist trade and production and bear the brunt of their crisis.
This is why my party starts with what is happening to the international
working class.”
“I know that people in my country are oppressed and people in this
country are oppressed too,” Grace told Kennedy as she signed up for a
Militant subscription. “But I thought I was the only one who thought
like this. Let’s keep in touch.”
Kennedy brought solidarity to a protest rally by Familias Unidas por la
Justicia, an independent farmworkers union in Burlington, where some 300
union members struck Aug. 27 demanding a union contract with Sakuma
Brothers Farms. The farmworkers, most of whom are indigenous workers
from Mexico, have been fighting for $15 an hour and union recognition
for three years. A few days later the union announced Sakuma Farms
bosses had agreed to hold a secret ballot election and begin negotiating
a contract.
“Very few political candidates are willing to be on the ground with the
people that the capitalist system affects most, especially in rural
areas,” Josefina Mora, a student at Western Washington University who
supports Familias Unidas, told Kennedy at the protest. “I’m excited to
meet you.”
‘U.S. troops out of the Mideast’
“We are talking to workers about the devastating impact the world
capitalist crisis is having on workers around the world and how only the
working class itself can chart the way forward for humanity,” Kennedy
told a campaign meeting at the Bethany United Church of Christ in
Seattle Sept. 3. “We are spreading the word about the Socialist Workers
Party, getting it known among workers and winning people to join us
campaigning. Anger and unease is widespread among workers about
deteriorating conditions we face. Workers want to discuss and debate the
way forward.”
“My party believes working-class struggles will grow as the depression
continues to deepen, in much bigger ways than today,” she said. “As we
gain confidence we will organize a mass working-class movement capable
of taking political power out of the hands of the capitalist class and
joining with workers worldwide to fight for a socialist world.
“Working people are concerned about the seemingly unending wars waged by
the U.S. government, especially in the Mideast,” Kennedy said. “We
demand Washington get the troops out now.
“We support the fight of Kurdish people for self-determination and
against the attacks by the Turkish government backed by the U.S.
military,” she said. “And we join in fights against attacks on Muslims
and mosques here in the U.S.”
“We condemn attacks on the right to vote today aimed at disenfranchising
workers who are African-American. From North Carolina to Michigan,
Kansas to Tennessee, where I campaigned recently, thousands of people
are being purged from voter rolls,” she said. “We join in the fight to
restore gains won in blood like the 1965 Voting Rights Act, which was
dealt a blow by the Supreme Court’s 2013 decision that opened the door
for state and local governments to carry out the attacks we see today.”
“People I know say they are voting for Clinton because she is a woman,”
Peggy Lytle, a Walmart worker, told Kennedy over coffee after the
meeting. “They don’t take into consideration her character and what she
and her husband have done to ordinary people. I can’t stand Clinton or
Trump, but now I know who I can vote for.
“I can’t handle these foreign wars,” she told Kennedy.
“They’ve been going on continuously for decades because the U.S. rulers’
attempts to use military power to maintain control over the world’s
resources and to exploit the world’s workers have run into difficulties,
creating crises and catastrophe throughout the Mideast and beyond,”
Kennedy said.
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